The present invention relates to wireless digital communication systems. More particularly, the present invention relates to communication stations which employ code-division multiple access (CDMA) technology. Specifically, the present invention relates to determining radio conditions for use in optimizing radio resource utilization as well as selecting data rates for user services.
In code-division multiple access (CDMA) third generation (3G) cellular telecommunication systems, adaptive modulation and coding (AM&C) techniques are applied to transmissions in order to achieve improved radio resource utilization and provide increased data rates for user services under appropriate conditions. These AM&C techniques take into account radio conditions in advance of transmissions in order to determine modulation and coding rates that take the greatest advantage of current radio propagation conditions utilizing these techniques.
Utilizing these AM&C techniques, a procedure is required that provides a physical channel quality measurement from the receiver in advance of each transmission. Based on this quality measurement, the transmitter determines the appropriate modulation and coding rate for the particular transmission.
In CDMA systems, as with any wireless systems, radio conditions can change rapidly due to a wide variety of both natural and man-made conditions. Since the channel quality measurement is used to determine transmission modulation and coding, and since channel quality changes rapidly due to the changing conditions of the transmission path, the performance of the adaptive transmission process is directly related to the length of the time period between when the channel quality measurement is performed and when the transmission is initiated.
Physical or logical control channels are then used to transfer the channel quality measurements from the receiver to the transmitter. Channel quality signaling may utilize either dedicated control channels to each user equipment (UE) or common control channels shared by all UEs. A UE may be a cellular phone, PDA (personal data assistant) or any other type of wireless device. When dedicated control channels are used, a continuous signaling channel is available over time for propagation of channel quality measurements for each UE. This is an optimal solution for AM&C since the quality measurement is continuously available. Transmissions can occur at any time, taking into account the continuously available quality measurement for appropriate modulation and coding settings. Additionally, with a dedicated control channel always available in the uplink, the channel can be also used to support low rate uplink data transmissions.
The difficulty with the dedicated control channel approach is that physical resources are continuously allocated even when there is no data to transmit. A primary application of AM&C techniques is non-real time high data rate services, for example, Internet access. For these classes of service, the best quality of service (QoS) is achieved with short, high rate transmissions with relatively long idle periods between each transmission. These long idle periods result in an inefficient use of dedicated resources.
The problem can be minimized with pre-configured periodic dedicated channel allocations. But this results in periodic availability of quality measurements. If the quality measurements are not continuously available, for UEs which have transmissions at any one point in time, only some portion of the UEs will have recent channel quality measurements.
Another alternative is the use of common control channels. With common control channels, a continuous signaling channel exists that is shared between all UEs within the cell. Procedures are defined for determining each UEs access to the common control channel. UE identities are used to distinguish UE specific transactions.
The difficulty with the common control approach for support of AM&C is the large amount of signaling overhead necessary to administrate each UE's access to the control channel. As aforementioned, UE identities are required to distinguish UE specific transactions. Additionally, to avoid contention-based access to the uplink common control channel, individual allocations are required to be signaled on the downlink common control channel for each UE's access. Since uplink transmissions cannot always be predicted, periodic allocations of the uplink control channel must be signaled on the downlink common control channel, which results in considerable signaling overhead. Also, the common control approach does not provide for low rate, uplink data transmissions.
In summary, the efficient performance of AM&C techniques is primarily based on the availability of recent physical channel quality measurements from the receiver in advance of each transmission. Optimally, measurements are available with minimal latency for all users with active data transmissions. The dedicated control channel solution provides continuous measurements, but since transmissions are discontinuous, this is an inefficient use of radio resources. Periodic configured dedicated control channels minimize the radio resource requirement, but this increases measurement latency. The common control channel method can provide measurements on a continuous or periodic basis, but the signaling overhead results in an inefficient use of radio resources.
There exists a need for a system that provides channel quality measurements with low latency and low signaling overhead.